


What You Don't Know (Will Hurt You)

by HobbitSpaceCase



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: HYDRA Trash Party, M/M, lots of hurt and not much comfort, promt fill, there be angst ahead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-04-03 13:32:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4102765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HobbitSpaceCase/pseuds/HobbitSpaceCase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for a prompt on HTP:</p>
<p>The Winter Soldier wants to hurt Steve because [insert reason here], and discovers the best possible method; telling him everything they did to his stupid dead friend and laughing about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You Don't Know (Will Hurt You)

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to clean this up a bit before posting here, but it's still unbetaed. If you catch any mistakes or weird phrasing or whatever, please feel free to tell me!

The first thing Steve hears on waking up is, “Did you know, they never used anesthetic on your friend, not even when they cut off his arm and carved into him to anchor a new one in its place.” The words are followed by sandpaper laughter, and Steve wonders for a head-spinning moment if he’s really woken up at all.  
  
When he gets his vision under control, he can see Bucky standing against a wall where the voice had come from. He’s got his head tipped down with a cap over his eyes and a smirk on his lips, half lit by weak light filtering through a grimy window high up one wall of wherever the hell they are. He looks so much like the Bucky he remembers that it takes Steve’s breath away; for a moment, he feels all of fifteen years old again, young and asthmatic and so fucking stupid over his best friend that he can hardly think straight, let alone breathe. Then Bucky starts speaking again.  
  
“’Course, it woulda been stupid to use up their anesthetic on someone so pathetic. I can’t say I blame them. The muzzle was originally made by the medical team you know, so they didn’t have to listen to him screaming so damn loud every time he got a little scratch.”  
  
Steve strains towards Bucky, before finally registering the restraints he’s in. There’s one chair in the room, bolted to the floor, and Steve is shackled to it with cuffs that don’t give even an inch when he tries to move. “Bucky, please-“ he starts, but Bucky interrupts him.  
  
“Do you like the restraints?” he asks, finally looking up at Steve. His familiar eyes are so dead, in spite of the teasing lilt to his voice, and Steve winces away. “They tried testing different kindsa cuffs on your friend, but he was so weak before he broke that it didn’t do a whole lotta good. So they tested them on me later. I’m a much better soldier, you see.” He laughed again, the sound bouncing off the walls around them before fading into the shadows. “They tested a lot of other shit on your friend, too, though. Pissed Zola right off the time they singed half the skin off his human arm on accident. He never saw those techs again, actually. Pity. One of them used to slip him bits of chocolate sometimes when he was being a good boy.”  
  
An ugly sob breaks from Steve as Bucky honest to god giggles. “God, Bucky,” he tries again, his voice breaking on the name in spite of his best efforts, “I’m so fucking sorry I wasn’t there for you. I know it’s never gonna be enough, but _I’m so fucking sorry_.”  
  
A flash of something ugly twists Bucky’s smirk into a frown, but it’s gone as fast as it appears.  
  
“Can’t tell _Bucky_ you’re sorry,” he sing-songs. “ _Bucky_ has been dead for years and years!”  
  
Steve sobs again and drops his head to his chest, and Bucky near leaps over to him, graceful and strong as a pouncing panther. “’S polite to look at someone when they’re speaking to you,” Bucky says, dragging Steve’s head back up by his hair. He still has that awful Bucky-smirk below dead and empty eyes, but his hand in Steve’s hair against all reason feels like hope.  
  
“Come home, Bucky,” he begs, staring into Bucky’s eyes like he can will Bucky to agree with stubbornness alone. “I can never make up for leaving you with them, but I can promise you that I’ll never let them hurt you again if you just _please_ come home.”  
  
Emotion that Steve cannot decipher crawls through Bucky’s eyes. He growls and drops Steve’s hair, who fights back a mewl at the loss of contact. “Shut up!” Bucky spits as he turns and walks back to his post by the wall. “Don’t you fucking listen? _Bucky_ is _dead_. Your friend died alone and screaming and Hydra put me under his skin instead.”  
  
“I know you’re not the same-“ Steve tries again, but Bucky once more speaks over him.  
  
“They used to make him sleep on the floor, even during missions, till he finally fucking died and let me in,” Bucky says, his voice back to the playful lilt. “Wouldn’t let him out of their sight.” He giggles, turning back to face Steve with his perfect pasted-on smirk back in place. “It was hilarious the first time they took him out on a mission and he wet himself because he wasn’t supposed to speak unless spoken to, and the poor bastard was too frightened to mention that he need to piss.”  
  
Steve can’t even try to stop the tears now; Bucky’s jagged laughter burrows under his skin like knives where once it was the brightest thing in his world, and he thinks his whole chest is fracturing wide open as his heart beats a useless rhythm of sorry-sorry-sorry-sorry. He’d happily bleed everything he has for Bucky, though. No matter how much he breaks, it’ll never come close to what he abandoned Bucky to.  
  
“They used to skin him in bits to better study his muscles and the changes from their serum,” Bucky says. Steve wants to kill every last hydra bastard, but he’d let them all get away in a heartbeat if Bucky would let Steve take him home and never stop holding him. Of course, Bucky isn’t done yet.  
  
“Did you know that they didn’t tell him you were dead till it’d be a year?” Bucky asks with a broken off laugh. “Everyone thought someone else had probably mentioned it to him, so he didn’t know until one of his guards told him that they had something special planned for the anniversary, and he thought they meant the anniversary of capturing him, the fucking stupid asshole. He actually told them that the only special thing that would happen was that Steve Rogers would rescue him.” Bucky has his eyes wide in feigned disbelief, a look Steve remembers well from the war when they would share fond looks over the antics of the other Commandos as if to say, “Look at these idiots, can you believe the assholes we hang out with?”  
  
Then Bucky throws his head back and laughs, loud and sharp and bright. “The first time he killed a little kid for them, he figured it didn’t matter anymore whether you were dead, because you weren’t coming for him either way.”  
  
Steve doesn’t know how he hasn’t shattered into pieces on the floor yet, but he can’t stop from saying, “No! God, Bucky, no, I would _never_ have stopped looking for you if I knew, I swear! I don’t care what you’ve done.” Steve has to stop and gulp down several ragged breaths before the next words will come out, but he manages to force them into the open because he’s never said it before and he thought Bucky _knew_ but what if he didn’t what if he never did what if he never realized-  
  
“ _I love you_.”  
  
Bucky nearly doubles over with laughter at that, and Steve can’t even speak around the all the failures that clog his throat.  
  
“Love?!” Bucky nearly screeches, then repeats, “Love,” in a hiccupping laugh.  
  
Bucky stalks towards Steve, and his eyes are so dark but there’s emotion there now, his eyes are nearly black with it. “ _You_ loved _him_?” Bucky asks, and he isn't laughing anymore. He is leaning down into Steve’s space, so close Steve can _almost_ touch. He grips the chair arm with his flesh hand and Steve’s hair with the metal one, and Steve meets his eyes and tries to put every last bit of his heart into them because Bucky _needs_ to know he means it.  
  
Bucky swallows back several false starts before speaking. The sing-song lilt cracks and disappears only a few words in, but Steve hangs on to every word.  
  
“You stole his heart and soul away, but he would have given them gladly had you asked. _He_ loved _you_! It was pathetic and you left him and you _died_ and I _always_ loved you. I can’t even _remember_ you and I can still _feel_ you in my bones. You feel like home, but home is blood and fear and adrenaline making my heart pound so fucking fast that I can’t feel anything else.” Bucky’s voice is a ragged growl by the end and he’s all but spitting the words at Steve, but he isn’t done.  
  
“Why?” he says, his grip painful in Steve’s hair. “Why do you make me feel like my head is cracking open and I can’t breathe? He’s _dead_. He’s dead he’s dead he’s _dead_.”  
  
“Please, Bucky, please come home with me.” Steve is so damn proud of his ability to get up from anything and never back down, but there is nowhere he won’t sink for Bucky. Begging is no hardship at all; he’d do so much more than beg if Bucky’d just let him, just ask. “Please,” he says, voice cracking with choked down sobs, “fucking please just let me take you home, let me take care of you.”  
  
“I can’t,” Bucky says, voice going flat. “I don’t know the way. I’m sorry.”  
  
He lets go of Steve’s hair and draws away. “Your Black Widow should find you soon.” And then he’s gone so swiftly Steve barely even sees him go. Steve doesn’t realize he’s crying again until the tears start dripping onto his pants, but he’s alone with no one to see him break, so he doesn’t bother trying to hold his own pieces together anymore.


End file.
